Munster, who had severally received information of the meditated escape; and on each occasion, Hammon, the gaoler of M'Carthy, was impressively lectured on the importance of his charge.

All precautions turned out to be in vain. Two days did not elapse, when M'Carthy's servant, Owen O'Synn, contrived to loosen and break the sash of a window that looked out into the street. The night was very dark, and few were abroad, but those of M'Carthy's own people who had been apprized that the attempt was then to be made, and were watching for him outside. When all was ready, and the hour was judged to be dark and lonely enough for their security, M'Carthy stripped off his clothes, which might easily be recognised, and creeped out of the window into the street. In this moment, an accident had nearly disconcerted his attempt: a young woman was passing up the street, and seeing a person in his shirt escaping from the prison window, she instantly raised a cry of alarm. The keepers within leaped up at once, and rushed straight to the prisoner's room, and finding it deserted and the window open, they bolted forth and began a search along the street and surrounding country; but the measures of the fugitive had been too well contrived, and they returned without their errand.

On hearing this disagreeable intelligence, Sir G. Carew sent off his directions in every quarter to have him intercepted. O'Sullivan Beare and Tyrrel, hearing of the incident, drew at once towards Muskerry in the hope of joining, and receiving the powerful aid of its fugitive lord. At the same time Macroome castle was taken by Sir Charles Wilmot, or rather fell into his hands by accident, just as he was on the point of raising the siege by the president's order; for the people within, set fire to the castle by want of caution in singeing a pig with a quantity of straw, and the fire having spread before it was noticed, they were compelled to quit the walls, and in their attempt to make a sally and escape into the woods, they were cut to pieces.

Every disposition was now made for a new war by Carew. But fortunately this extremity was rendered unnecessary; for M'Carthy was not long before he came to a just conviction of the hopelessness of any effort at resistance. He saw the helplessness of Tyrrel and O'Sullivan, and also discovered that his country was actually in the possession of the English-that his wife and children were also prisoners in their hands. It was therefore plain enough that his last hope was in submission. He therefore adopted the wise course of soliciting the mediation of the most influential persons, and offered, if admitted to plead for himself, that he would do every thing in his power to make amends for his past offences. His application was granted, and on the 21st October, 1602, he came before the president and council, and humbly besought the queen's mercy, acknowledging his offences, and only pleading the loyalty of his affections toward her majesty. He was then pardoned in consideration of the severe losses he had sustained, both by the burning of his castle and the destruction of the harvest of Muskerry that autumn by the queen's army and the rebels, of which the loss was computed to be £5000 at the least. It was also taken into consideration, that he had not

joined the rebels, and the evils thus saved were admitted in his favour, as his force and means of resistance were at that time more formidable than those of any other Irish subject in that province; and his extensive country, had he rebelled, must have occupied the main exertions of the English army to reduce it. On these and other such considerations, he was admitted to mercy, and took the oaths devised by lord Mountjoy for the Munster lords. At the same time, he, with four of the best Munster barons, joined in security for his future good conduct under the penalty of £3000.

After this his conduct was such as to gain the confidence and approbation of the queen's administration. He continued to take an active and efficient part in the service; he led his own men under Wilmot, in Glengariffe, and was detached into Carbery with captain Taffe, when he lost thirty of his best men.

As the rebellion subsided, and the country settled into a temporary repose, M'Carthy exchanged the troubled life which entitled his name to appear in the records of his day, for the peaceful possession of his castles and lands.

Postscript.

We have now with no small diligence passed down along the turbid and blood-stained stream of five centuries of a confused and longdrawn revolution, selecting liberally from the most distinguished names which from their recurrence in the page of history can be said to have any fair claim to the distinction of a memoir. To include all for whom some claim might be urged, would demand a larger work and a far more liberal allowance of time; and it may be doubted whether it would avail for any object sufficient to countervail the added labour and expense. Of the principal persons omitted in the period now closed, the greater part have in reality no title to further notice than the mention which history has preserved; having derived whatever small importance they possessed from the accident of position, rank, or incident; and neither occupying a leading station, nor acting a distinguishing part. But it is also necessary to apprize the reader, that some highly distinguished names have been omitted because they are to have a foremost place in the commencement of the following period, which is separated from that we have now terminated, merely for the sake of convenience.

Of some persons whom we shall not have occasion to mention again, a few prominent particulars may be worthy of mention. Some whose rank gave them prominence, and some whose names are foully embalmed by signal atrocity, are passed occasionally with doubtful decision. Sometimes in the page of Irish history a few sentences convey some deed of horror, which had it been perpetrated in modern times, would fill the hundred tongues of rumour with loud outcry; or which if a little more fully recorded, or if Irish history were better known, would be expanded over the page of romances as heart-moving and terrible as the legends of Montrose, or the fiendish deed of the tragedy of Kenilworth. But these brief relations preserve nothing

but the horror; they require at least a dash of the free and inventive conception with which the author of "Sketches in Ireland," has conjured up a few old scenes of Ireland, in all their fierce and glowing life. From the very attempt at this, the nature of our dull task of compilation prohibits; and if in a work of sober and instructive verity, it were allowable to fill up the broken outline from conjecture, we must confess that the nature of our material would alone repress the attempt. Invention with all its airy audacity, stands appalled before the page of the laborious Cox, Ware, Hanmer, Marlborough, where the shrivelled and meagre mummies of ancient saints and chiefs which they have preserved in the dust and fretted parchment of antiquity, appear attenuated into the dates of their existence, and reject all alliance with flesh and blood, or with the deeds, thoughts, and human nature of this upper world and modern time. Nevertheless, we may truly assure the reader, that we have so far had an eye to his pleasure, that we have availed ourselves of every hint to facilitate his conception, that truth and the nature of our undertaking would admit; as seldom as possible omitting the relation of any incident of sufficient interest to relieve his attention, or enliven a dull but necessary detail.

Among the distinguished names of this period, there is perhaps none so justly celebrated as Raleigh: his unfortunate and erratic career may in some measure be said to have commenced in Ireland. While he obtained military honour and large estates in the close of this period, his name constantly recurs among the captains of the president of Munster, having borne a marked part in the desperate siege of Dunboy castle. His enterprising temper alone changed the current of his life, and prevented his having laid the foundation of an illustrious Irish

name.

Having obtained ample grants in the counties of Cork and Waterford, out of the vast estates forfeited by the earl of Desmond, he built a house for himself in the town of Youghal. Of this we are enabled to give the following interesting extract :- "The house in which Sir Walter is said to have resided, when at Youghal, is still standing, and in good preservation. It adjoins the churchyard, and is at present in the occupation of Sir Christopher Musgrave. It is a mansion of long and low proportions, not remarkable either for beauty or peculiarity of architecture, several of the apartments are of rather spacious dimensions, and finished with oaken panels and large chimney pieces well carved. In a garden attached to this residence, it is believed Raleigh planted the first potatoes grown in Ireland. According to a current tradition, the man intrusted with the care of the garden in the absence of Sir Walter, supposed that the apple or seed, was the esculent part of the novel production; and finding the taste unpleasant, bestowed no farther thought on the plantation until upon digging the ground for some other crop, the root was found to yield a wholesome and palatable species of food, of more importance to the future condition of Ireland than all the political schemes, wars, and encroaching settlements of queen Elizabeth, her councillors, and armies."*

To the particulars in this extract, Lewis's Topographical Dictionary

* Brewer.

enables us to add a few interesting particulars. The place of Sir Walter is now called Myrtle-grove, and is or was recently the property of the Hayman family. The panelling of the drawing-room is remarkable for its rich carving. "In removing the panelling of one of the rooms some years since, an aperture in the wall was discovered, in which were found several old books, one bound in oak and printed at Mantua, 1479, consisting of two parts, one in black-letter, a history of the Bible, with coloured initials: the other an ecclesiastical history by John Schallus, professor of physic at Hernfield, dedicated to prince Gonzales."

Sir Walter Raleigh's Irish career began under the earl of Ormonde and was pursued in the wars of Munster, where he gained more in fortune than reputation. After this, returning for a while to England, he rose in the queen's favour, and served with distinction in many enterprizes. In 1584, he is traced in England serving as M.P. for Devon, and leading a life of most intense study, cultivating and patronizing every science and liberal art. The following interval is not very distinctly traced, but we are inclined to fix upon it as the period of his residence in Ireland, we should conclude from the above-mentioned particulars, with the design of settling; and this seems confirmed by the additional fact that, in 1588, he was mayor of Youghal. But it appears that the management of his large Irish property required an exclusive attention which ill suited with his romantic and restless nature, and that the rents were far below the apparent value of the property. He returned to England with a mind filled with specious and glittering prospects, and soon after obtained an appointment from Elizabeth to the government of Jersey. He had failed in his endeavours to excite the mind of the prudent queen, by the sanguine representations of foreign discoveries of visionary realms, which lay before his imagination with the brightness and solidity of the gorgeous vapours of a glorious sunset, and his fancy tinged even reality with a dream-like aspect, which rendered them questionable to sober minds. In his account of one of his voyages he says, "Those who are desirous to discover and to see many nations, may be satisfied within this river which bringeth forth so many arms and branches, leading to several countries and provinces about two thousand miles east and west, and eight hundred north and south, and of these the most rich either in gold or other merchandizes. The common soldier shall here fight for gold, and pay himself instead of pence with plates half a foot broad, whereas, he breaketh his bones in other wars for provant and penury." During the latter years of queen Elizabeth, the name of Raleigh is illustrious among splendid constellation of glorious names, which raise the literary glory of her reign so high. Shakspeare, Johnson, Beaumont, and Fletcher, with their contemporaries, were among his familiar acquaintance.

the

It was some time after the siege of Dunboy, that Sir Richard Boyle was sent into England with an account of that transaction, by Sir George Carew, who advised him to purchase Raleigh's Irish estates. A meeting for the purpose took place in England, between Boyle and Raleigh, and Cecil introduced them at Carew's request, and acted as moderator in the transaction, which ended in a bargain by which Raleigh conveyed his Irish estate to Boyle for the sum of £1500, the

land being about 12,000 acres in extent. It is a curious circumstance, that some years after Sir Walter obtained his liberty, after twelve years' confinement in the Tower, at the expense of the same sum with which he purchased the intercession of the profligate Villiers. This long interval of confinement was rendered more honourable by Raleigh's genius than his years of liberty by military exploits of which the character was little chivalric or humane, and foreign enterprizes too much like buccaneering expeditions to be satisfactory to a mind like his. It was immediately after the transaction above related, that he became involved in a charge of treason, made by lord Cobham, and too well-known for detail. Of his innocence we entertain no doubts. His long confinement was mitigated by the free exercise of an unconfined imagination; the gloomy cell was peopled by his boundless fancy, and the Hesperian Isles of discovery lay between his contemplation and the grim walls which cooped him in. With much difficulty, and the exertion of considerable influence, he revived a plan which he had long entertained for the colonization of New Guiana; in an unlucky hour, surrounded by the evil influence of Spain, and the unfavourable dispositions of the king and his principal ministers, and under a sentence of death which made his life answerable for the result of a doubtful adventure, Raleigh was appointed to command an expedition for the purpose of founding a settlement in Guiana. The result of this is familiar in every English history; it failed in such a manner as to wreck the fortunes and implicate the character of the unfortunate leader. He had embarked his entire property in it; his son who sailed as one of his captains, was slain in an attack upon St Thomas; his friend and second in command shot himself in despair, and Raleigh returned to a bloody death from the axe of the executioner: he was ordered to execution on his sentence twelve years before.

Among the eminent names of this period, of whom our regular plan cannot properly be said to admit of a distinct memoir, there is none whose claim to notice stands higher than Charles Blount, lord Mountjoy, by whose distinguished services the Ulster rebellion was brought to its conclusion. Our life of Hugh, earl of Tyrone, may indeed be considered as containing the most important passages of the life of this eminent soldier, and we shall here endeavour to supply the most important particulars which we were in that article compelled to omit. Charles Blount, the second son of lord Mountjoy, was born about 1563. He was educated at Oxford, and designed for the bar. In the university, the fairest hopes were encouraged by his rapid progress in literature, as well as by the habits of intensely diligent study which became the habit of his life, and strongly marked his character. Early in his youth he professed the honourable resolution, to raise again the sinking honours of his family. His grandfather had dilapidated a good fortune in the profuse and luxurious court of Henry; his father evidently a weak man, instead of improving his impoverished estate by industry and economy, had recourse to the chimeras of alchemy, which then as for previous ages continued to impose on mankind, and to beggar thousands with the promise of visionary wealth. His elder brother's extravagance still further reduced the fortune of the family. Charles began early to manifest the indications of a wise, honourable,